The theory of cellular memories states that memories, as well as personality traits, are not only stored in the brain but may also be stored in organs such as the heart.
The heart has a system of neurons that have both short- and long-term memory, and the signals they send to the brain can affect our emotional experiences.
After a period of abnormal ventricular activation, such as ventricular pacing, intermittent left bundle branch block or pre-excitation, the heart 'remembers' and mirrors its repolarization in the direction of the previous QRS.
For explicit memories – which are about events that happened to you (episodic), as well as general facts and information (semantic) – there are three important areas of the brain: the hippocampus, the neocortex and the amygdala. Implicit memories, such as motor memories, rely on the basal ganglia and cerebellum.
Cellular memory (CM) is a parallel hypothesis to BM positing that memories can be stored outside the brain in all cells. The idea that non-brain tissues can have memories is believed by some who have received organ transplants, though this is considered impossible.
It takes the specialized organization of neurons in the brain to produce cognitive processes that we experience as the mind.” So despite the presence of neurons in the heart, we can see that the heart does not have a mind of its own.
Ever since people's responses to overwhelming experiences have been systematically explored, researchers have noted that a trauma is stored in somatic memory and expressed as changes in the biological stress response.
What is the brain? The brain is a complex organ that controls thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and every process that regulates our body.
Long-term memory - information becomes a physical 'thing'
Unlike short-term memories, long-term memories have a physical presence in the brain, and aren't dependant purely on specific patterns of activity. Neurons make new physical connections and synapses with each other when a new long-term memory is formed.
The amygdala stores the visual images of trauma as sensory fragments, which means the trauma memory is not stored like a story, rather by how our five senses were experiencing the trauma at the time it was occurring. The memories are stored through fragments of visual images, smells, sounds, tastes, or touch.
Psychologists once maintained that emotions were purely mental expressions generated by the brain alone. We now know that this is not true — emotions have as much to do with the heart and body as they do with the brain. Of the bodily organs, the heart plays a particularly important role in our emotional experience.
“The mind forgets, but the heart will always remember.
Dopamine creates feelings of euphoria while adrenaline and norepinephrine are responsible for the pitter-patter of the heart, restlessness and overall preoccupation that go along with experiencing love. MRI scans indicate that love lights up the pleasure center of the brain.
Aristotle imagined the soul as in part, within the human body and in part a corporeal imagination. In Aristotle's treatise On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration, Aristotle explicitly states that while the soul has a corporeal form, there is a physical area of the soul in the human body, the heart.
Brain function does not die immediately after the heart stops finds study. According to new research, people can be aware that they are dead after their heart has stopped beating. This suggests that the brain and consciousness seems to work even after the body has stopped working.
But this is a trick question. When the heart beats, it pumps blood to your lungs and the rest of your body. But in between beats, the heart muscle relaxes as it fills with blood. It relaxes only for a moment after each contraction, but that still counts as resting.
Memory erasure has been shown to be possible in some experimental conditions; some of the techniques currently being investigated are: drug-induced amnesia, selective memory suppression, destruction of neurons, interruption of memory, reconsolidation, and the disruption of specific molecular mechanisms.
Memories are stored in the brain in the form of neuronal connections or synapses, and there is no way to transfer this information to the DNA of germ cells, the inheritance we receive from our parents; we do not inherit the French they learned at school, but we must learn it for ourselves.
The brain stores memories by changing how neurons talk to each other. When one neuron fires an actional potential, another neuron activates. Over time, this connection gets stronger. Scientists can watch this play out in real time by stimulating and recording slices of brain tissue.
In modern psychology, genetic memory is generally considered a false idea.
Memories occur when specific groups of neurons are reactivated. In the brain, any stimulus results in a particular pattern of neuronal activity—certain neurons become active in more or less a particular sequence.
Amnesia can result from damage to brain structures that form the limbic system, which controls emotions and memories. They include the thalamus found deep within the center of the brain. They also include the hippocampal formations found within the temporal lobes of the brain.
Emotional information is stored through “packages” in our organs, tissues, skin, and muscles. These “packages” allow the emotional information to stay in our body parts until we can “release” it. Negative emotions in particular have a long-lasting effect on the body.
Traumatic memories rerouted and hidden away
Memories are usually stored in distributed brain networks including the cortex, and can thus be readily accessed to consciously remember an event.
Body and Mind
The positive emotions of gratefulness and togetherness and the negative emotions of guilt and despair all looked remarkably similar, with feelings mapped primarily in the heart, followed by the head and stomach.